Want to tell someone Happy Hanukkah and you aren’t online at the same time? It’s Memoserv to the rescue! MemoServ lets registered IRC users send short messages to other registered IRC users, whether they are online at the time or not. You can think of it as a simple IRC mail system.

Sending Messages

To send a message, use this command:

/msg MemoServ SEND nick memo-text

For example, to send a holiday message to LordBaconCheeseburger, I would use this command:

/msg MemoServ SEND LordBaconCheeseburger Happy Hanukkah!

In your status window, you’ll see something like this, confirming your message:

-MemoServ- Memo sent to LordBaconCheeseburger.

Finding Out If You Have Messages

If you are logged in when someone sends you a message, you will see a notification in your Status window, which looks something like this:

-MemoServ- You have a new memo from tengrrl.
-MemoServ- Type /msg MemoServ READ 1 to read it.

Some IRC clients will show the message in your active channel as well.

Of course, you might miss the notification if you are away from your computer, so you can check the list of messages to see if anything new has arrived. To get a list of your messages, use this command:

/msg MemoServ LIST

You’ll see a list of your current messages. Any messages with an asterisk (*) by the message number are new. You’ll find additional options for the LIST command on the command pages.

When you log into GeekShed, a notification message will be in your status window. Check the status window to see if you received any messages while you were not logged in.

Reading Messages

Reading messages is easy, but you have to know the number of the message first. If you need to, use the Memoserv LIST command to get the message number. Once you have the number, read the message by using this command:

/msg MemoServ READ num 

Just replace “num” with the message number from your list. For instance, to read message number 1 from my list, I would type: /msg MemoServ READ 1

There are additional options for the READ command that allow you to read all the new messages or to read a range of messages.

Additional Options

You can learn more about the Memoserv commands, including how to delete messages and how to set up notification options. Now that you have everything you need for simple messages, send me a message if you have any questions (or just want to send one of those holiday greetings).

—posted by Tengrrl/Bunny